Diarra Kilpatrick loves a mystery. Growing up watching classic detective tales like the original Perry Mason, Murder, She Wrote and Columbo with her grandmother created a lifelong love of the genre. That love has resulted in her creating and starring in investigative tales like American Koko and acting in detective noirs such as HBO‘s Perry Mason. Diarra From Detroit, streaming in full now on BET+, is her latest mysterious creation.
Kilpatrick stars as Diarra Brickland, who’s juggling her messy divorce with husband Francois, aka “Swa,” played by Morris Chestnut, while also trying to move on in her love life. She goes on a magical Tinder date with a new man, Chris (Shannon Wallace), who then goes M.I.A. Determined to prove she wasn’t ghosted and that something really happened to this man, Diarra turns herself into a private investigator, recruiting help from her reluctant but supportive best friends, Mr. Tea (Bryan Terrell Clark) and Aja (DomiNque Perry). Her search for the man pulls her into a decades-old mystery involving the Detroit underworld.
Kilpatrick tells TV Insider in the video above that she’s been married for too long to have experienced getting ghosted by someone from a dating app, but the idea for this series came from friends coming to her with their ghosting “horror stories.”
“I wanted to give women a little bit of wish fulfillment,” she says of the premise. “Like, you know what? I am not going to take a ghosting lying down. I’m going to see what happens. And also affirming them in like, no, girl. You are amazing! He didn’t call because he was kidnapped. That’s really what happened.”
That’s exactly the journey the show’s Diarra sets out on in this Detroit-set tale. Kilpatrick tells TV Insider that Chestnut’s Swa is not pleased that his soon-to-be ex-wife is so invested in the search for this man. That search brings wild twists, like an encounter with an edgy Phylicia Rashad as Vonda who’s a far cry from the sitcom mom she’s known to be here.
As Clark reveals above, Rashad signed on to the series because of Kilpatrick’s unique comedic skills, both in her performance and in writing (Kilpatrick stars, writes, and executive produces the series — black-ish‘s Kenya Barris is also an EP). Indeed, Perry says the eight episodes are chock full of funny, most of which was completely scripted, not improvised. The fashion is also a character in and of itself as a symbol of Detroit culture, but also as nods to the detective genre. As Clark shares, hats and coats and cars and other “Easter eggs” throughout the episodes were used to help create a modern noir that still had a Dick Tracy feel.
While, Kilpatrick honors Black culture in Detroit in Diarra From Detroit, she says the show was made for all to enjoy.
“Sometimes I feel like there is this unspoken thing that content that is female-driven is for women, and content that is Black-driven is for Black people. And so content that is Black female-driven, it gets whittled down to a smaller and smaller group,” she says. “I really did make a show that is specifically entrenched in Black culture, very specific to the city of Detroit, but it is for everybody. The seed of it comes, like I said, from the shows that we all watched with our grandmothers, Black, white, and whatever. We hope that as a community, people will rally around this show because it’s a good time.”
Get to know the hilarious and talented cast of Diarra From Detroit in the full video interview above, conducted at the Television Critics Association Winter 2024 Press Tour.
Diarra From Detroit, Available now, BET+
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